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School of Transdisciplinary Studies Aims to Attract New Talents
KAIST opened the School of Transdisciplinary Studies to foster ‘convergent talents’ who can create new knowledge through a transdisciplinary approach. The new department will officially start classes in the spring semester of 2020 while recruiting its first cohorts during the fall semester among current freshmen.
President Sung-Chul Shin, the Head of the School of Transdisciplinary Studies Jong Duk Kim, and other prominent members of KAIST’s administration celebrated the opening of the new department during a ceremony on September 18. Students who will declare their major this semester and many parents showed strong interests in this new department while attending the ceremony. They all toured the new facilities together and attended the special lecture sessions.
The School of Transdisciplinary Studies is designed to empower students to create new solutions to emerging complex technologies and rapidly evolving global issues. This is one of the education innovation initiatives under Vision 2031, the plan President Sung-Chul Shin has launched to nurture creative young convergent leaders, and the first single transdisciplinary department that will be introduced in a Korean university.
The new faculty aims to educate students who will have a deeper understanding of the humanities, scientific creativity, the ability to conceive new ideas, complex problem-solving skills, and global leadership. The curriculum boasts a strong foundation of basic science and humanities over six required courses in physics, chemistry, molecular biology, applied mathematics modeling, data structure, and economics. Then, students will explore their academic depth by choosing one of eight emerging fields. The eight concentration majors encompass data and AI, smart cities and media, healthcare, culture and media, management and startups, materials and matter, energy and environment, and machinery and precision. In their third and fourth years, students can customize their study course based on their career path and academic interest after consultation with a faculty mentor and an internship. Upon graduation, they will earn a bachelor’s degree in convergent science or a bachelor of convergent engineering degree. They may also elect to receive a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering.
“This faculty offers deep knowledge in basic science and humanities to help students explore their specialties more creatively. Specialties built upon strong theory and creative applicability will be the key to solving the global challenges in an era of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity,” said Professor Kim, the head of the school, at the ceremony.
President Shin also stressed the importance of convergence education during his special lecture, saying, “We will continue to strive to foster new talents who will create new convergent knowledge in emerging technologies such as IoT, big data, 5G, and AI. By fostering such young convergent talents, we will take the lead in national development and work for the prosperity of humanity.”
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2019.09.19 View 4986 -
Six Professors Recognized for the National R&D Excellence 100
Six KAIST professors were listed among the 2018 National R&D Excellence 100 announced by the Ministry of Science and ICT and Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning.
Professor Il-Doo Kim from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering was recognized for his research on developing source technology for manufacturing a highly sensitive gas sensor with low power consumption. His work was recognized as most excellent in the field of mechanics and materials.
Additionally, Professor Ho Min Kim from the Graduate School of Medical Science & Engineering was listed as most excellent in the field of life and marine science for providing structural insights into the mechanism of proteins that regulates synapse development.
Meanwhile, Professor Byong-Guk Park from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering was listed as excellent in the field of mechanics and materials for his work on thermal spin current.
In the field of energy and environment, Professor Jae Woo Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering was listed as excellent for his work on CO₂ conversion to carbon materials.
Last but not least, Professor Min H. Kim from the School of Computing and Professor Kyung Cheol Choi from the School of Electrical Engineering were recognized as being excellent in the field of information and electronics. Professor Kim was recognized for image processing technology that reconstructs interlaced high-dynamic range video while Professor Choi was lauded for realizing flexible displays on fabrics.
A certificate from the Minister of Ministry of Science and ICT will be conferred to the scientists and their names will be listed on a special 2018 National R&D Excellence 100 plaque to celebrate their achievement.
These six professors will be nominated for merits including the Order of Merit, the President’s commendation, and the Prime Minister’s commendation and given privileges during the process of new R&D project selection.
2018.10.18 View 4309 -
Center for Industrial Future Strategy Takes Off at KAIST
(Professor Wonjoon Kim from the School of Business and Technology Management)
Professors from KAIST and major international universities launched a mega-scale research center focusing on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, named the Center for Industrial Future Strategy (CIFS).
This center is funded by the National Research Foundation Korea and will receive 2.25 billion KRW over four years.
Directed by Professor Wonjoon Kim from the School of Business and Technology Management, the center is comprised of ten top-tier researchers and four research associates, including Professor Hawoon Jeong (KAIST), Professor Scott Stern (MIT), Professor Aaron Chatterji (Duke University), Dr. Yong Suk Lee (Stanford University) and Professor Hyejin Youn (Northwestern University).
The center will conduct research on technical, social, and economic changes derived by a new paradigm of technological innovation.
Moreover, they will study policies and strategies in relation to innovation in the corporate and government sectors to achieve economic growth in a sustainable manner. The center will also propose policies and strategies in a variety of economic and industrial settings to establish a sustainable and global innovation ecosystem.
To carry out these studies successfully, CIFS will further expand the AIEA-NBER Conference with the Asia Innovation and Entrepreneurship Association (AIEA) and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in which numerous Nobel Laureates in Economics are affiliated. They will also comprise thematic research teams with co-founding universities to build stronger cooperation with one another.
Besides the academic cooperation, the center will also build partnerships with international organizations, including the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to carry out their missions at multilateral levels.
Their research topics include changes to value chains in a new paradigm of technological innovation, labor market changes in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, sharing economies and social interests, big data, artificial intelligence & privacy policy, and innovation & ethical and institutional countermeasures to AI technology.
Professor Kim said, “The new paradigm of technological innovation is evolving social, economic, and industrial structures, such as R&D, industry, technology, labor, finance, and institutions. The Center will contribute to proposing policies and strategies so that Korea, as well as the international community, can take appropriate measures to these big changes.”
2018.09.11 View 9075 -
KAIST Core Technology Fair Accelerates Commercialization
(President Shin makes opening remarks at the KAIST Core Tech Transfer Day in Seoul.)
Technology commercialization is the one of the innovation initiatives KAIST is strongly driving. KAIST showcased six core technologies developed by KAIST research teams during the 2018 KAIST Core Tech Transfer Day on September 10 at Coex in Seoul. More than 300 investors, buyers, and venture capitalists showed up for the fair. This is the second fair organized as one of the strategic innovation initiatives that KAIST is promoting.
Developers of key technologies selected in the fields of bio, nano, AI, and semiconductors presented their distinct technological prowess to the attendees. The technologies are highly relevant for the new industrial environment trends in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The 15-member committee comprised of patent attorneys, venture capitalists, and commercialization specialists selected the six core technologies based on their innovativeness, applicability, and marketability. The Office of University-Industry Cooperation (OUIC) plans to offer buyers various services for developing business models, business strategy analysis, and marketing at home and abroad. The six core technologies featured at the fair include:
- Novel technology of a nano patterning platform by Professor Hee Tae Chung from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
- Anticancer therapeutic candidate materials strengthening immune function by Professor Byung Sok Choi from the Department of Chemistry
- Biofuel mass production using micro-organisms by Distinguished Professor Sang-Yup Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
- Compact single-shot hyperspectral camera technology by Min Hyuk Kim from the School of Computing
- AI-powered high speed ultra-high definition upscaling technology by Professor Munchurl Kim from the School of Electrical Engineering - A radiation strong MOSFET device by Hee Chul Lee from the School of Electrical Engineering
President Sung-Chul Shin stressed in his opening remarks that universities should make contributions to economic development through innovation. “Global leading universities are taking an instrumental role in creating new jobs and economic growth with their own technologies. KAIST, as the leading university in Korea, is accelerating the commercialization of technology produced internally to create a meaningful impact for the economy as well as the job market beyond Korea,” he said.
“We are aiming for the global market, not just in Korea. I want KAIST to be a global value creator that can contribute to the betterment of the world through our innovations,” he added.
2018.09.10 View 5592 -
The MSE/CBE Int'l Workshop Explores Big Ideas in Emerging Materials
(KAIST President Sung-Chul Shin with scholars participated in the workshop)
The MSE/CBE International Workshop brought together editors from key academic journals in multidisciplinary materials science and scholars from leading universities at KAIST on Aug. 7.
The workshop hosted ten distinguished speakers in the fields of nanostructures for next-generation emerging applications, chemical and bio-engineering, and materials innovation for functional applications. They explored opportunities and challenges for reinventing novel materials that will solve complex problems.
(From left: Professor Buriak, Professor Swager and Professor Il-Doo Kim)
Speakers included: Chief Editor of Nature Materials Vincent Dusastre; Editor-in- Chief of ACS NANO and professor at UCLA Paul S. Weiss; Jillian M. Buriak, Editor-in-Chief of Chemistry of Materials; Associate Editor of Macromolecules and professor at MIT Timothy M. Swager; Coordinating Editor of Acta Materialia and Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT Christopher A. Schuh; Editor-in-Chief of Biotechnology Journal and Metabolic Engineering and Distinguished Professor at KAIST Sang-Yup Lee; Associate Editor of Energy Storage Materials and professor at KAIST Sang Ouk Kim; Professor Jeffrey C. Grossman at MIT; Professor Zhenan Bao at Stanford University; and Professor Hyuck Mo Lee, head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST.
Interdisciplinary materials research holds the key to building technological competitiveness in many industrial sectors extending from energy, environment, and health care to medicine and beyond. It has also been the bedrock of KAIST’s scholarship and research innovation. More than 200 faculty members in the field of materials science produce about 800 SCI papers every year. The two departments of materials science and chemical biomolecular engineering are leading KAIST’s global reputation, as they were both ranked 13th and 14th in the QS World University Ranking by Subject this year.
(Professor Il-Doo Kim fromt he Department of Materials Science Engineering)
Professor Il-Doo Kim from the Department of Materials Science Engineering has been the chair of this workshop from 2016. In hosting the second one this year, he said that he hopes this year’s workshop will inspire many materials scientists to have big ideas and work to make those big ideas get noticed in order to have a real impact.
(KAIST President Sung-Chul Shin)
President Sung-Chul Shin, who is a physicist specializing in materials physics, expressed his keen interest in the workshop, saying innovative materials made of unthinkable and noble combinations will be the key factor in determining the competitiveness of new technology and new industries. He lauded international collaborations for making new materials and the scholarly passion to evaluate the materials’ characteristics that made this significant progress possible.
Dr. Vincent Dusastre, chief editor of Nature Materials, presented recent trends in materials for energy. He described how the rational design and improvement of materials’ properties can lead to energy alternatives which will compete with existing technologies. He pointed out that given the dramatic fundamental and practical breakthroughs that are taking place in the realization of solar cells with high energy-conversion efficiency, the improvement of batteries for electric vehicles and the grid is also a major challenge. He stressed, “Key advances in sustainable approaches beyond Li-ion batteries and control of redox processes are also greatly needed.”
Meanwhile, ACS NANO Editor-in-Chief Paul S. Weiss spoke on the importance of heterogeneity in the structure and function of molecules and nanoscale assemblies. He stressed that such extensiveness of multi-interdisciplinary research will accelerate a greater impact as indicated when the fields of neuroscience and microbiome converged with nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Editor-in-Chief of Chemistry of Materials Professor Jillian M. Buriak from the University of Alberta described how predictive models and machine learning can replace time consuming empirical device production and screening. By understanding and pinpointing the frustrating bottlenecks in the design of stable and efficient organic photovoltaics, much faster throughput can be obtained to enable a more direct pathway to stability, efficiency, and finally commercialization.
2018.08.13 View 10963 -
Czech Technology Mission with KAIST
Members of the Czech research community visited KAIST to discuss medium to long-term cooperation with KAIST. This visit was hosted by the Fourth Industrial Revolution Intelligence Center (FIRIC).
The community is comprised of people from Czech enterprises and academic institutes that are leading core technologies for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the fields of AI, robotics, and biotechnology. They had a chance to meet KAIST professors and visit research labs.
Professor Il-Doo Kim from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor Seongsu Kim from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Professor Hyun Uk Kim from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering attended the meeting, which took place in the Mechatronics, Systems, and Control Lab under the Vice President for Planning and Budget Soo Hyun Kim and Professor Kyung Soo Kim from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Professor Petr Novák from the Technical University of Ostrava said, “It was a meaningful meeting to help understand research trends on industrial robots in Korea.” Professor So Young Kim from FIRIC said, “The Czech research community is strong in basic research where KAIST has outstanding source technology. I hope this visit will open up a path for medium to long-term cooperation on sharing research and technology know-how between the Czech research community and KAIST.”
2018.06.07 View 5613 -
KAIST Class of '78 Celebrates 40-Year Reunion
(from left: Chairman Hyung Kyu Lim from the KAIST Alumni Scholarship Foundation and KAIST President Sung-Chul Shin)
The Class of 1978 reunited on May 26 at the College of Business on the KAIST Seoul Campus, which was the main campus when they were students 40 years ago. Now leaders of Korea in the sectors of industry, academia, and research, the Class of ’78 held a homecoming event in celebration of the 40th anniversary of their graduation.
Approximately 120 guests attended the event, including the head of the KAIST Alumni Association Ki-Chul Cha, Emeritus Professor Jae-Kyoon Kim, and Emeritus Professor Choong-Ki Kim from the School of Electrical Engineering.
The Class of ’78 includes Man Gi Paik from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Chairman Hyung Kyu Lim from the KAIST Alumni Scholarship Foundation, President Sang Hyuk Son from Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology, and Provost and Executive Vice President O Ok Park from KAIST.
At the event, the Class of ‘78 donated a scholarship worth 1.5 billion KRW. Chairman Lim said, “We will put every effort into helping KAIST students who will be future leaders. We hope this fund will go toward students who will create new value and contribute to society.”
President Shin added, “The effort and affection of the alumni will be a strong foundation for KAIST taking the next big step. In response to the support and affection of 61,125 KAIST alumni, KAIST will make every effort to become a world-leading university.”
2018.05.30 View 4710 -
Capillary Forces at Work for Lithium-Sulfur Batteries
Professor Do Kyung Kim from the KAIST Department of Materials Science and Engineering and his team succeeded in developing high-areal-capacity lithium sulfur batteries (Li-S batteries) by capturing polysulfide with carbon nanofibers. This research will provide new batteries to replace existing lithium rechargeable batteries, shifting the commercialization of related technologies ahead.
Electrical vehicles and large-scale energy storage systems necessitate the development of batteries with high energy density and cost effectiveness, and Li-S batteries are known to be one of the promising alternatives to the predominant lithium ion batteries.
With six times as much energy density, Li-S batteries theoretically thrust electric vehicle to twice the distance of lithium ion batteries. Therefore, they have been spotlighted as next-generation lithium rechargeable batteries because they can go up to 400km once charged.
However, several issues make it challenging to readily commercialize Li-S batteries. The low electrical conductivity of sulfur, volumetric expansion and contraction of the battery during charge and discharge, and permanent damage of the electrode caused by the dissolution of the lithium polysulfide into the electrolyte – known as the “shuttle effect” – are three of the biggest obstacles to commercial-grade Li-S batteries.
While there have been numerous attempts to curb, avoid, or alleviate these issues — such as the physical encapsulation of sulfur using various metal oxides or carbonaceous matrices — most of them entail utilizing zero-dimensional (0D) carbon materials. This encapsulation method has been somewhat effective in enhancing the electrical conductivity of sulfur while simultaneously tolerating some volumetric alterations and suppressing the shuttle effect. The downside of 0D carbon material-based encapsulation methods is their complicated synthetic processing and the limited mass loading of sulfur.
With this in mind, the team set out to employ one-dimensional (1D) carbon materials instead. Unlike the 0D case, 1D carbon materials render a large surface area and a long-range conduction path for electrons and lithium ions. Being 1D also solves the undesirable high-contact resistance problem frequently encountered by 0D carbon material-based encapsulation.
The key to developing the proposed material was to exploit the capillary force to decrease the energy associated with the dissolution of polysulfides. As such, carbon nanofibers (CNFs) were found to be suitable for high-areal-capacity lithium-sulfur batteries since capillary force acting between CNFs can take advantage of the high electrical conductivity with the suppressed dissolution of sulfides.
The research findings show that sulfur was successfully contained in between the CNFs by wetting due to the capillary force without the need for complicated synthetic processing, as in the 0D case. The research results indicate that the sulfur contained per unit area (mg/cm2) is five times greater for the newly implemented method, which then enabled the lithium-sulfur battery to achieve an areal capacity of 7 mAh/cm2, which amounts to as much as at most seven times that of conventional lithium ion batteries.
First author Jong Hyuk Yun stated that the unprecedented methods utilized in this study will help further and widen the progress of lithium batteries in general. Meanwhile, Professor Kim said, “This study brought us closer to commercial-grade high-capacity Li-S batteries, which are applicable for a wide variety of products, including electric vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and drones.”
This research, led by PhD candidate Yun, was published in the 18th issue of this year’s Nano Letters.
Figure 1. Electrochemical reaction leading to the containment of the sulfur within the carbon nanofiber and the corresponding specific capacity of the battery over a number of charge-discharge cycles
Figure 2. SEM images of the first discharged electrode containing lithium sulfide at the junction between the nanofibers, and the first charged electrode
Figure 3. carbon nanofiber effectively absorbing liquid based lithium polysulfide
2018.05.14 View 7221 -
Cross-Generation Collaborative Labs Open
KAIST opened two cross-generation collaborative labs last month. This novel approach will pair up senior and junior faculty members for sustaining research and academic achievements even after the senior researcher retires.
This is one of the Vision 2031 innovation initiatives established to extend the spectrum of knowledge and research competitiveness. The selected labs will be funded for five years and the funding will be extended if necessary. KAIST will continue to select new labs every year.
A five-member selection committee including the Nobel Laureates Professor Klaus Von Klitzing at the Max-Planck Institute for Solid State Research and Dr. Kurt Wüthrich from ETH Zürich selected the first two labs with senior-junior pairs in March.
(Two renowned scholars' Cross-Generation Collaborative Labs which opened last month.
Distinguished Professor Lee's lab (above) andChair Professor Sung's lab)
Both labs are run by world-renowned scholars: the Systems Metabolic Engineering and Systems Healthcare Laboratory headed by Distinguished Professor Sang-Yup Lee in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Acousto-Microfluidics Research Center for Next-Generation Healthcare led by Chair Professor Hyung Jin Sung in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Distinguished Professor Lee will be teamed up with Professor Hyun Uk Kim, and their lab aims to mass produce new eco-friendly chemical materials as well as higher-value-added materials which will be used for medicine. The new platform technologies created in the lab are expected to provide information which will benefit human healthcare.
Meanwhile, the Acousto-Microfluidics Research Center for Next-Generation Healthcare will team up with Professors Hyoungsoo Kim and Yeunwoo Cho under Chair Professor Sung. The lab will conduct research on controlling fluids and objects exquisitely on a micro-nano scale by using high-frequency acoustic waves. The lab plans to develop a next-generation healthcare platform for customized diagnoses as well as disease treatment.
KAIST President Sung-Chul Shin, who introduced this novel idea in his research innovation initiative, said that he hopes the Cross-Generation Collaborative Labs will contribute to honoring senior scholars’ research legacies and passing knowledge down to junior researchers in order to further develop their academic achievements. He said, “I sincerely hope the labs will make numerous research breakthroughs in the very near future.”
2018.05.03 View 9859 -
Deep Learning Predicts Drug-Drug and Drug-Food Interactions
A Korean research team from KAIST developed a computational framework, DeepDDI, that accurately predicts and generates 86 types of drug-drug and drug-food interactions as outputs of human-readable sentences, which allows in-depth understanding of the drug-drug and drug-food interactions.
Drug interactions, including drug-drug interactions (DDIs) and drug-food constituent interactions (DFIs), can trigger unexpected pharmacological effects, including adverse drug events (ADEs), with causal mechanisms often unknown. However, current prediction methods do not provide sufficient details beyond the chance of DDI occurrence, or require detailed drug information often unavailable for DDI prediction.
To tackle this problem, Dr. Jae Yong Ryu, Assistant Professor Hyun Uk Kim and Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee, all from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), developed a computational framework, named DeepDDI, that accurately predicts 86 DDI types for a given drug pair. The research results were published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) on April 16, 2018, which is entitled “Deep learning improves prediction of drug-drug and drug-food interactions.”
DeepDDI takes structural information and names of two drugs in pair as inputs, and predicts relevant DDI types for the input drug pair. DeepDDI uses deep neural network to predict 86 DDI types with a mean accuracy of 92.4% using the DrugBank gold standard DDI dataset covering 192,284 DDIs contributed by 191,878 drug pairs. Very importantly, DDI types predicted by DeepDDI are generated in the form of human-readable sentences as outputs, which describe changes in pharmacological effects and/or the risk of ADEs as a result of the interaction between two drugs in pair. For example, DeepDDI output sentences describing potential interactions between oxycodone (opioid pain medication) and atazanavir (antiretroviral medication) were generated as follows: “The metabolism of Oxycodone can be decreased when combined with Atazanavir”; and “The risk or severity of adverse effects can be increased when Oxycodone is combined with Atazanavir”. By doing this, DeepDDI can provide more specific information on drug interactions beyond the occurrence chance of DDIs or ADEs typically reported to date.
DeepDDI was first used to predict DDI types of 2,329,561 drug pairs from all possible combinations of 2,159 approved drugs, from which DDI types of 487,632 drug pairs were newly predicted. Also, DeepDDI can be used to suggest which drug or food to avoid during medication in order to minimize the chance of adverse drug events or optimize the drug efficacy. To this end, DeepDDI was used to suggest potential causal mechanisms for the reported ADEs of 9,284 drug pairs, and also predict alternative drug candidates for 62,707 drug pairs having negative health effects to keep only the beneficial effects. Furthermore, DeepDDI was applied to 3,288,157 drug-food constituent pairs (2,159 approved drugs and 1,523 well-characterized food constituents) to predict DFIs. The effects of 256 food constituents on pharmacological effects of interacting drugs and bioactivities of 149 food constituents were also finally predicted. All these prediction results can be useful if an individual is taking medications for a specific (chronic) disease such as hypertension or diabetes mellitus type 2.
Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee said, “We have developed a platform technology DeepDDI that will allow precision medicine in the era of Fourth Industrial Revolution. DeepDDI can serve to provide important information on drug prescription and dietary suggestions while taking certain drugs to maximize health benefits and ultimately help maintain a healthy life in this aging society.”
Figure 1. Overall scheme of Deep DDDI and prediction of food constituents that reduce the in vivo concentration of approved drugs
2018.04.18 View 10314 -
Open Online Course in Science and Technology, STAR-MOOC
Four universities specializing in science and technology, along with POSTECH and UST, teamed up to establish programs for innovation in education programs, responding to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
KAIST held an opening ceremony for the Science & Technology Advanced Research - Massive Open Online Course (STAR-MOOC) and signed an MoU with GIST, DGIST, UNIST, POSTECH, and UST.
STAR-MOOC was launched on February 26 to provide educational service to the public. It is a joint platform where people can take courses featuring lectures from professors from universities specializing in science and technology as well as national research universities.
It offers 15 courses covering basics, majors, and electives related to science and technology developed by the STAR-MOOC committee. Students can take a variety of courses.
At the opening ceremony, KAIST President Sung-Chul Shin, DGIST President Sang Hyuk Son, UST President Kil Choo Moon, POSTECH Vice President Wankyun Chung, UNIST Vice President Jae Sung Lee, GIST Vice President of Public Affairs Pil-hwan Park came to sign the MoU for provising educational services for the public.
During the ceremony, there was also time to introduce a technical agreement with a non-profit organization founded by NAVER, the CONNECT Foundation, for its courses and platform.
Universities participating in STAR-MOOC will put effort into capacity building in response to changes driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
President Shin said, “STAR-MOOC is a platform that provides science and technology courses from basics to electives and major courses. It will become a leading educational platform.”
Students can register and choose courses from the website (http://starmooc.kr).
2018.03.19 View 7480 -
CBNU Wins the First AI World Cup 2017
KAIST hosted the first AI World Cup 2017. A total of 26 teams, comprised of Korean undergraduates or graduates, participated in AI Soccer, AI Commentator, and AI Reporter competitions.
On the first of December, the final tournament for AI Soccer was held in the KI Building. More than 200 people came to watch the first AI soccer match based on the Deep-Q Network Learning. The games were commentated by two KAIST students who humorously interpreted the games, catching people’s attention.
In AI Soccer, 18 teams participated, and KAIST BML (KAIST), AIM (KAIST), WISRL (KAIST), and AR Lab (Chonbuk National University) made it to the final four. Each team had its own unique style and strategy.
After some fierce contests, the win went to AR Lab, which showed fearless attacks throughout the game. Having no goalkeeper, AR Lab focused on attacking. According to the team, instead of training individual players, they concentrated on training a manager that directed the players, giving them a choice when to attack and defend.
(AR Lab from Chonbuk National University, the winning team of AI Soccer tournament)
Different from humans playing soccer, it was interesting to see how AI robots self-improved their movements while playing the games.
For AI Commentators, judges looked for a team with the most accuracy, forecasting ability, and fluency. Four teams competed, and the Yally team won the title.
For AI Reporters, which required informativeness and reliability, four teams participated, and the prize went to a team, named Deep CMT (KAIST).
Although this year’s games only included domestic universities, KAIST plans to extend participation to university students from around the world in the future, and hopes that the AI World Cup 2017 will become the foundation for launching the next games on an international level.
2017.12.04 View 4642